Master Chef local - Bhindi - Mushroom biryani in 8 steps

Come Christmas season and time at hand, I decided to give my culinary skills a refresh. Inspiration was lying on the kitchen shelf in the form of raw washed okra and I thought though me and kids may well favour non vegetarian dishes, why not try something that my veggie better half would equally savour. So here goes.

Step 1 - Round up some chopped ginger and garlic, onion, okra and mushroom

Step 2 - Heat a saucepan, add about 2 tablespoon oil and start with the ginger and garlic

Step 3 - Add in the onions and keep stirring...

Step 4 - In go the veggies - okra and mushroom

Step 5 - Keep going on a low burn, you can see a nice brown tinge come along, add salt to taste

Step 6 - nearly done there, ready for rice to go in

Step 7 - Add in microwave cooked basmati rice (I gave this 12 minutes with about 120 g rice and 450 ml water)

Step 8 - Its ready to serve! Stir some some raita to go with and enjoy!

NB: This is hardly a food blog - but as goes with the title anything goes with a creative license!

The familiar question...

(This is an article initially drafted about 10 years ago...publishing 10 years hence.. as I found the time...and the courage..and in any case the ability to disclaim it to a 10 year younger self!)

My wife asked me, for the umpteenth time, 'what shall I make for lunch?'. By a vague mathematical calculation which I am generally good at, it is somewhere between the 4561 to 4900th time that I have been asked the question. I guess its is fair on my part to say that I am rather tired of answering this question... 

It has been my constant refrain to be excused the pain of this question, to move to a more planned regimen of menu for a week, or in the worst case to be offered options, the process of deciding the fine aspect of what needs to be cooked is at best a trivial decision, not because it is a decision of the lower order, but because what is in the refrigerator stands to be consumed sooner than later in one form or another. So what needs to be cooked for lunch is just a matter of timing, its when it should be cooked. Is it going to be okra for lunch and cabbage for dinner or the other way around. 

My problem is that the questions are offered sans a choice, open ended, when an open choice doesn't really exist. Smart alec answers like 'butter chicken, braised salmon or shalmi kebab' are soon retorted with 'You know that's not possible'. My wife is a greenie, rest of the family are mild rebels to her cause. 

So the process of responding to her in a manner she likes is rather time consuming. To start with, I must detach from the context what I am doing. Then proceed to determine first the available inventory, two, a mental run through of what the tastebuds would appreciate or more often than not, offer less resistance. When I am in a good humour, I offer value added advice on creative suggestions and several new additions to our household menu have come by - such as - ginger chicken with sautted vegetables or Saffron egg rice, inspired my my alma mater mess (seriously good!).

Of late have been less indulgent to fork my creative processes in culinary direction, so the aspect of menu decisions has lost its sheen for me. I am back in my safe zone of muted resistance at the dinner table on 'sameness'. But my wife is persistent. Well so am I. I will thwart her persistence this time, not by outright refusal, but by cunning. So what I do is as follows,

'What do we have in stock?'

'Okra, Cabbage and Cauliflower'

We have been quite health conscious recently, having gathered a few extra kilos apparently almost suddenly. So picking the theme,

'Let me check for the nutrition advice for each' 

I check the inventory and discover we have 3 vegetables to choose from - Okra, cabbage and cauliflower. Next, I decide to make a very scientific decision by consulting nuitritiondata.com on the calorific/minral/fat value of each of these three greenies. It takes mew few minutes to get there, she awaits disterestedly. Okra has vitamin C, Traced of agany begin to appear. Cabbbage, Vitamin A and cauliflower has loads of fiber to clear your intetstines. This is getting a bit too much now. 

Considering the weather for the day, a bit chilly, I decree that it is best to make okra beacuse it will provide more resistance, and the delay inconsumption will potentially cause some of the vitamin C to be lost to the microbacterial residents of the refrigerator complex. 'Ridiculous, I am off my top' she says to herself.

Fibers are less prone to destruction, I premise, because I guess they are too big for microbacterial intestines. Driven to it, she despairs and 'Let it be, I will decide myself'.

I smile in subtle victory.

We proceeded to have okra, cabbage and cauliflower over the sequence of the Lunch, Dinner and next day's lunch. All is now well.

If only politicians were to write more books...

Continuing on my reading thread I have picked up another book, this time Shekhar Gupta's Anticipating India. I haven't been far through it and the themes of the previous book 'The difficulty of being good' are hard to shelve down still. But in going through it I am going through the equivalent of a 'torch shining through dark corners' of the mind.  The mind has a incessant capacity to seek reason and justify what it sees. When it sees something it understands and agrees with, it resonates harmoniously, when it seems something it doesn't like, doesn't agree with and doesn't understand, it jars and sends pain triggers depending upon how close you are to the problem and how big the problem is. And as time goes this rhythm of resonance and pain triggers somehow imprints itself on a memory reel inside the mind.

Reading up these books I am finding is slowly giving those missing answers to those questions never answered or issues never understood that lie way in the past, 20-25 years ago when I was growing up. Why did the painful events of 80s and 90s happen. The militancy in Punjab and Kashmir, the bribery scandals, political assassinations, riots, minority strife. Why? And looking at those events at the time, one was always trying to understand why the leadership was staying mute and passive.

Why was Narasimha Rao so quiet, when he did achieve much? Why Rajiv Gandhi, a charismatic leader, and a good human being by many accords, fail so miserably in expectations of him? Why did CWG corruption go unpunished for so long? Did people like Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and Manmohan Singh not have power to rope them in? Why did Manmohan Singh not take any action against his corrupt ministers despite one scandal after another?

These are the kind of questions that remain entrenched. Slowly these collective of books are giving the answers. Not complete, not direct, but factual nuggets here, and plausible theories here that begin to stack up. And whilst they do not undo the wrong that was done, the fact that I understand 'why' better, rings in a degree of resonance to a question long unanswered.

All these books though are works of either senior and reputed journalists or senior industry leaders. None, by politicians. I wonder though if I can glean so much from memoirs or equivalent of journalists, how much more there would be to books by India's politicians. And why aren't there enough?

I suspect it has something to do with the fact that an Indian politician never retires and thus never has the space to go into a memoir mode. Unlike the United States or the United Kingdom, where once you have had your chance at power for an agreed timeframe 5,10 or 15 years, that is it. You are out of it then and expected to sit back and let a newer set lead. Not so in India. In India you just go back to the pavilion and wait your turn in the next innings. Over and over again. If you don't have a team that makes it to the league, switch loyalties and you will get there eventually.

And so it seems an unwritten mantra, if you want another innings, never make any foes, even with ones you are ideologically opposite to. By extension never write a book, for in doing so you are bound to expose skeletons in a variety of closets of your near or far. Doing so might mean your political career is over.

Thus the pitiable state of information in India. Slightly different, but in similar vein I recollect a reference Sanjaya Baru makes in his book The Accidental Prime Minister, on Dr. Manmohan Singh's initial drive to allow official documents older than 30 years to be released to public. However Dr. Manmohan Singh did not go ahead and in his response to why, said that the previous (NDA) government should have done that. Then why didn't they? Anybody's guess...

The pointlessness of it all..

Its not a great title to a post. But, its mid week and I have been reading a heavy dose of contemporary literature on India to and fro work. Needless to add, it is not the most optimistic set of books I have read, but it relates to fact in one case and deeply enmeshed mythology in another.

Book 1 - The Durbar - a gripping account of the 1970 to 90s through journalist Tavleen Singh's eyes and views. Hard to summarise but it tells a tale of how every one and anyone, particularly those close to or in power are basically bound to fail expectations or commit mistakes outside the realms of good sense. Few if any good stories emerge from that, from top to tail though its a story how how India was failed time and again and again by its leaders.

Ok, that's done though and whilst it wasnt disneyland reading, it was factual and contextual to a time when I was growing up.

Book 2 - The diffculty of being good, by Gurcharan Das - I am part way through this one, but already grinding to a halt. Which is no good, though in a lopsided way, a tribute to the abilities of Gurcharan Das to construct a powerful narrative. For all, it is an exceptionally richly written book, around the Mahabarat, its characters, the hypocrisy of nearly all - both the so called 'good' and the so called 'bad'. The part I have read so far, elaborates for a fair length on how the world is riveted to envy. How the prosperity and happiness that we so seek and cherish, its other side is abysmal and depressing trait of jealousy. And how many of the world's worst episodes from age old to modern 20th century find their roots in envy of of individual or another or of one group of another. And how unfailingly nearly everyone is prone to it and failings it induces.

It didn't help when to digress I picked a short story book by Anupam Kher and the first page I open is on the same subject! I must take a pause.

Obviously this post is not about optimism. Nor does it try seek a solution. Its like one of those soul searching movies that finish abruptly with credits, with a question suspended on you.

Is there a point to it all?

Hoping for a better India..

16th May 2014. I would like to record this date when a turning point was set for India. When a change in true sense was initiated. 5 years on will it be? I hope it will. For too long the country has seen weak, indecisive leadership, leadership that has been content to project weakness for sake of its survival.

As a child, watching cricket it never ceased to amaze me how countries much smaller than India were able to turn out teams that would give India a thorough drubbing. It defied common sense that a country with 1 billion people should lose in its national game to a country with less than 10 million people. Did we not have good players? Did a wider base not mean more to choose from? Or was the system that selected at fault. It had to be the latter. A growing years found out, it was the case in not just cricket, but every sphere.

Leadership and administration qualities have been a good-to-have quality, rarely a must to take charge of the high offices of the land.

Perhaps this election has brought about that change...

It is interesting and almost re-assuring to see that change come from a party that has been otherwise labelled all sorts of unpleasant names. Despite all that here was a party that was able to step aside from the heirloom mould and pass the baton to a younger candidate on merit of his administrative calibre. India saw that and voted for him.

Which other party can claim to have done that? Not one I can think of...

The outgoing incumbent, the grand old party, one would have thought could have set this precedent - depressingly it failed to. A generation grew up watching a government sit on the sides as its ministers tore and abused the fabric of India's governance for their own ends. CWG games, 2G scam, coalgate. Was there a leadership at all?

In his recent book 'The accidental Prime minister' Sanjaya Baru wrote that no minister in the Manmohan Singh Government felt he owed his berth to the Prime Minister. Manmohan Singh himself had low respect for most of his minister's administrative capabilities barring 1-2 individuals. Think of a cricket team where the captain doesn't trust any of his players, the players do not have any respect for the captain, they run amok and when they do, Captain just sits and watches. Not what you would call a Government - a 'curse' is a better if strong word.

One hopes though, they can learn their lessons from this episode. The story from this election should not be a one off wonder that India occasionally gets lucky with. It should be that if you choose leaders that matter, leaders who can deliver, the country will choose you.

One hopes for parties to embrace this simple change - Choose its leaders on merit than tradition. Listen to the sentiment of the people, show that you listen and act decisively when you have heard it. That's it

In that change, is the longevity of Indian turnaround really possible. That is the turning point I hope this election will become.